Costco's well-earned reputation for treating its in-store employees well carries over to its warehouse. The Costco warehouse does not rely on temp workers. It hires employees directly, it pays pretty well and it has a safety representative and even stretching classes. Despite all that, the company still manages to provide some of the lowest prices available to consumers.

"We tend to not outsource even if we could save money by doing it," says Richard Galanti, Costco's chief financial officer. "We recognize it might cost more but we think it's the right thing to do. ... Everyone in the building feels like they're employed."

As to comments about how warehouses are built, sustainability efforts can benefit the employees and the environment and even provide additional benefits:

Sustainable Construction and Renewable Energy
The organization Leadership in Energy andEnvironmental Design (LEED) has a certification program that is nationally accepted as a benchmarkfor green building design and construction. Costco’s metal warehouse design, one of the warehousedesign styles we have built over the past several years, is consistent with the requirements of theSilver Level LEED Standard. Our metal building envelopes are all insulated to meet or exceed currentenergy code requirements, and our main building structure uses 100% recycled steel material and isdesigned to minimize the amount of material utilized. The roof materials used on our metalpre-engineered warehouse are 100% recycled standing seam metal panels, designed to maximizeefficiency for spanning the structure; and the exterior skin of the building is also 100% recycled metal.In 2008, we opened our first certified Silver Level warehouse in New Jersey. With regard to renewableenergy, by the end of calendar 2011 we will have in operation large rooftop solar photovoltaic systemsat 60 of our facilities, in Hawaii, California, New Mexico, and New Jersey. They are projected togenerate 55 million kWh of electricity per year. We also continue to expand the use of non-chemicalwater treatment systems used in our cooling towers to both reduce the amount of chemicals going intosewer systems and, where possible, reuse that water for site irrigation. By coordinating with state andfederal incentive programs, these and other energy-saving systems help us reduce our carbon footprintand lower the cost of operating our facilities. We continue to evaluate additional opportunities toimprove energy efficiency.

Insulated warehouses that produce energy - not only possible but built and operating.

But all told, the company has plunked out almost $47 million in CEO pay in 2011, with Whitman making $16.5 million and Apotheker $30.4 million, including a $6.4 million bonus.

~~~

Apotheker earned a base salary of $1.1 million, plus a $6.4 million bonus and another $17.6 million in stock. But he also earned a mysterious roughly $5.2 million in "other compensation."

Could that have been his golden parachute for 11 months worth of work?

Whitman, who took the CEO role at the end of September, got her pay in a hefty $16.5 million stock award and $372,598 in the mysterous "other compensation category."

But hey , Whitman only makes a "salary" of $1 officially, so that's likely the model they hold up to the employees there. "See. She makes less salary than you do. Well, until we lay off most of you, that is."

Seems like he has had a good circular scam going on for quite awhile:
Make risky investments - the riskier the better; buddy with Merkel to get the German citizenry to pay bailout money to Greece, little of which goes to Greeks, but instead funnels back to Deutsche Bank (and other banks) to pad his profit; all the while arguing for austerity and against "haircuts" which is the euphemism for incurring any loss (even a pfennig's worth) for taking all that risk in the 1st place.

He, as well as many of his colleagues, shouldn't be benefiting, they should be indicted.

Moving Deutsche Bank from a stable conservative bank to one taking risky ventures
Resisting regulation while increasing speculation
Pushing austerity while raking in record profits (though he has not done so well at the profit part recently)
Privatizing profits while socializing risk

When the Swiss banker turns over his position in May of this year to the leadership duo of Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen, he will leave behind a Deutsche Bank that is radically different from the financial institution that he took over in 2006. What was once a successful yet conservative German credit institution has become a global investment bank -- one which plays a role in all important markets and earns gigantic profits.

Many in Germany, however, view the bank's growth with skepticism. Ackermann has become the poster boy in the country for unscrupulous financial capitalism and the media has done little to counter that view. He is seen as only being interested in maximizing profits -- an economic principle that Germans have long been skeptical of, and one which has lost all acceptance since the beginning of the financial crisis.

Even more so in recent weeks, as the crisis has spiralled. As head of the Institute of International Finance, he is a lobbyist for Europe's banking industry, and one of the people holding the fate of Greece in his scissorhands.

~~~

A minor detail. German prosecutors tried him for handing outsize bonuses to executives at the telecoms firm Mannesmann. He paid €3.2m (£2.8m) of his own money to make it all go away.

He was originally scheduled to go last year, but two successors have now finally been named. Deutsche Bank will miss him. Not so sure about Greece.

Greek debt crisis
Further information: Greek government-debt crisis
In 2011, the IIF was the main negotiating partner of the EU government, acting on behalf of the private creditors of Greece, on its debt restructuring. In the second bailout plan (July), some academics raised issues about its communication about "haircuts" on Greece's debt (estimates biased upward), and, more generally, the IIF's undue influence in favor of banks, at the expense of Greece's future

Voting has begun in the French presidential election, a ballot which could transform the political colours of France and spark a change in Europe's approach to its debt crisis and austerity measures.

All polls for months have shown the Socialist party candidate, François Hollande, beating the rightwing Nicolas Sarkozy, the most unpopular French president ever to run for re-election. The left is hoping for its first Socialist president since François Mitterrand's re-election in 1988, which would be a rare event in a Europe that has swung to the right in recent years and weakened the left.

If Sarkozy is defeated after one term in office, he would become the 11th European leader to be swept from power since the economic crisis. Hollande has promised to renegotiate Europe's fiscal pact on austerity and shift the focus to growth measures.

Sarkozy has remained defiant, claiming that the polls were mistaken, predicting a higher-than-expected turnout that would play in his favour. In the final days of campaigning, he suggested the poll could be so tight that there may need to be a recount, comparing it to George W Bush's win in 2000 after a Florida recount.

Those protests were exactly about changing laws for the better, in that case about "They were demanding enforcement of the first major law to bar discrimination against the disabled."

Very much in-your-face and they won.

http://www.npr.org/programs/wesun/features/2002/504/But in San Francisco at the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, protesters didn't give up. One day turned into a second day and then a third. More than 100 disabled demonstrators stayed in the building for weeks, refusing to leave until the regulations were signed.

On April 28, nearly four weeks into the sit-in, HEW Secretary Joseph Califano endorsed the regulations. The protesters had won.

Much, much more at link.

Photographer HolLynn D'Lil wrote a poem about the image:

Through the Glass

Those who wouldn't go outside
Those who couldn't go inside
Shattered the walls.

Edited to add:
Good piece here with retrospective on the above protest and the power of people joining together to effect change:

The San Francisco 504 sit-in did not succeed because of a brilliant strategy by a few disability leaders. It succeeded because the Deaf people set up a communication system from the 4th floor windows inside the building to the plaza down below; because the Black Panther Party brought a hot dinner to all 150 participants every single night; because people from community organizing backgrounds taught us how to make collaborative decisions; because friends came and washed our hair in the janitor's closet sink.

The people doing disability rights work in the 1970s rarely agreed on policies, or even on approaches. The successes came because people viewed each other as invaluable resources working towards a common goal.